142 THE STATE AS FARMER 



making Irishmen irreconcilable and farm 

 labourers outlaws. The younger sons will 

 always be asking for passports into far 

 countries without squalid incentives to travel. 

 I therefore take the point of view of land for 

 all who will do justice to it. 



The well-being of the labourer, therefore, is 

 bound up with the State management of the 

 land. We have to decide whether in view 

 of the light that the war has let into our 

 councils we can afford to go on in our recent 

 methods as regards our working population. 

 Are we as a people prepared to allow a small 

 minority of our citizens so to act that those 

 other citizens who work the land are to be 

 starved in the matter of food and made squalid 

 by the disgraceful provision of houses ? If 

 we are not prepared to allow any longer the 

 dangerous destruction of our rural population 

 by impossible conditions, we are in my opinion 

 driven to a positive policy of definite State 

 management. If there is one fact more certain 

 than another it is that those who are respon- 

 sible for the present management have re- 

 iterated — in every place and at every time, 

 in season and out of season, sometimes with 



